Let me ask you this:
Do you think it will ever
come knocking, the second wind
that powers all the boats?
Will it rattle all our hinges
and make every hair stand out
on even the most distant arms?
Do you think they know,
the ones who send us
everything inevitable,
setting off a whistling
somewhere in our bones?

Don’t worry —
I can do it again,
this magic trick
of the mind.

It’s not like
there’s a daily limit
or

a penalty for having
paused. I can do it
again, another bead
on the string,

and another.
Every day,
my string

is cut; all my
beads tumble
back into
the box

where I keep them.
Every day, the same
box with different

beads — slightly
different — and
every day, I race
to string them

before time runs out.
That’s what I’d like
you to think, but

the truth is,
there are days
when I don’t
look inside.

A large cockatoo roams inside my head,
saying words that only I understand.
I believe it has chosen me
for some type of mission,
but its larger plan is, as yet,
unknowable, unknown
as its canny, nictitating eye.
I feel its clawed, leathery toes
grasping my medulla oblongata.
It tells me, repeatedly, rasping,
that it is as smart as
a two-year-old human child.
Well, so am I. So am I.

But I do appreciate that you tried,
and I’ll show you to your car.
You can ride off into the night
with a tale you can only tell
yourself: something about
how you looked in my mirror,
how we ate the papers, too,
not just the cupcakes of life,
and you always hated my dog, or
I never had a dog, but I did
once make you a cicada sandwich
because you said you wanted
to try something new.

I am the same as an elegant bluebird.
I wear pink houndstooth all the time.
Pass me a mint, Freddie — I have

some people to kiss,
and none of them
are you.

I love
these burnt ends of earth
where you live
and where the ground
is dust
your hair is dust
your eyelashes
carrying dust
wherever you go
it falls everywhere
and everywhere it falls
new fires begin